A few of my tarot reading friends had been pestering me to get a lenormand deck. They said they’re so easy to get to grips with and they’re really accurate. I considered getting one but none of the decks I had been looking at seemed to call out to me.
The other night I was browsing through Ebay and I found an interesting deck called ‘The Devil’s Acre – Penny Fortune Cards’ I read the description and it talked about the depravity and criminal activity that took place in an area in Old Victoria London known as the Devil’s Acre. The creator of these cards used the imagery of that period in time to create this charming lenormand deck. I really enjoy the history of London, particularly Victoria London with its Opium dens, Dickensian workhouses, narrow cobbled streets and the fear of coming across Jack the ripper. It was such an interesting place to be at the time, but also a very dark place.
I decided to purchase a deck and I was glad that I did as there was only 100 decks made. My deck arrived a few days later and said that it was number 94 out of 100.
As soon as I opened the box, I analysed every single card like I always do when I get a new deck. I then put them back in the box and took them to my room. After lunch, I got the cards back out again, this time though, there was something different. The card entitled ‘Gallows’ was scuffed and bent. I didn’t understand it, I knew I couldn’t have done that, I’d not even shuffled them yet. I knew it didn’t come like that because I inspected them when I first opened the box.
The next day I showed the cards to my sister, she instinctively began looking at each individual card. I began pottering about when I heard her say ‘hey what happened to this card?’ I thought she was referring to the ‘Gallows card, but I looked over and it wasn’t the ‘Gallows’ card she was talking about, it was the ‘Old Bill’ card. This made even less sense, I’d not taken them out of the box since discovering the ‘Gallows card’ was bent and scuffed, and now somehow the ‘Old Bill’ card was in a similar condition.
My sister got some old Victorian pennies out of a draw and suggested we take some pictures of the cards with the pennies for my Instagram page. After taking a few pictures, I then noticed a large tear in the corner of the ‘Gallows’ card, this had appeared in the space of about 2 minutes. I pointed it out to my sister and she agreed that there definitely wasn’t a tear in that card 2 minutes ago. If you scroll back up to the pictures, you can see the tear in the lower left corner of the card.
After taking some photographs it suddenly dawned on me.. what if someone was trying to give me a message? I thought about it and then asked my sister if the deck might be haunted by someone who was arrested, hence ‘Old Bill’ and then hanged hence ‘Gallows’. My sister agreed that it might be the case and suggested we do Ouija board. Although that seemed like a good idea, I felt that the cards would tell us more than a Ouija board could.
I thought about the old method of choosing a significator card in a tarot reading. It involved laying out all of the cards face down and then flipping a coin onto the cards, which ever card it landed on would be the significator. It was a method used in the Victorian times, and so I thought I’d use this method to find out more about this ghost.
I believed the ghost to be male so I didn’t ask that, although it would have been easy to answer since there is a ‘Woman’ card and a ‘Man’ card. My first question was ‘What was your profession if you had one’ I tossed the coin and it landed on the ‘Pedlar’ card, I then asked what crime he had committed, the coin landed on the ‘Gaol’ card, which basically means ‘Jail’ I asked again about the crime he committed and got the ‘Man’ card. My sister then pointed out that maybe he was innocent and he doesn’t want to mention the crime he was accused of but rather get across his message that he was a simple man who went to prison and was then hanged for a crime he didn’t commit.
I decided not to pressure the ghost into answering questions about the crime he was accused of and instead asked for his name. The coin first landed on ‘Apothecary’ and so we believed his name began with ‘A’ the second card the coin landed on was ‘Lodgings’ and so we started calling him ‘Al’
Tonight I’m sat in my bedroom watching TV and a faint smell of vanish keeps wafting over. I’ve not smelt that in my room before. I can only assume it’s Al.
I’ll keep you posted on whether any new paranormal activity begins to happen, but for now I’ve got to say, it really seems like a man from the Victorian times who was put to death has attached himself to these cards. I know it sounds crazy and there might be an innocent explanation, but currently I can’t think of one.
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